FA- VA4 antenna analyzer kit.

The condo kit corner.

About a month ago my FA-VA4 vector antenna analyzer kit came in and it has sat idle until Friday. I had the day off and with everything done that needed to be done, I say "everything that needed to be done" because there is always something to get done! I decided it was time to put the kit together. This really is the first kit I have attempted to assemble since moving into our small condo in Toronto. I no longer have the huge desk, nice lighting and the room to place all my equipment around me. Now it's a roll top desk with 2 slide out shelves, that is my only choice for kit work now. Trying to get the exhaust fan, soldering station and other small miscellaneous items in place is a real challenge. What was also a challenge was remembering where the heck I placed things in the dam condo! I have a nice Panavise setup for holding my boards in place while soldering. I could find the arms but I was not able to locate the base. I looked everywhere but had no luck and nothing bothers me more than knowing it's somewhere but just not able to find that "somewhere". I had to settle for placing just the Panavise arms on the slide out and do my best. I found very quickly that working in a tight space one has to be very aware of cords and tools, a few times moving the soldering iron in place almost had the soldering iron cord take the make shift Panavise (holding the circuit board) onto the floor. The kit from Box73 comes from Germany, the shipping time was fantastic as well as packaging. There is no SMD work to be done that was done and I only had to mount some connectors, power on switch, pushbuttons and the LCD display. After being away from kit building for a very long time this was a nice way to jump back into things. I first took an inventory of the parts and this is something I always do. I hate getting to the point when a part can't be found and your not sure if it was not shipped or misplaced by me? Doing the inventory allows me to contact the vendor and in the case of large projects the part arrives in time for that point in the assembly. Everything was there and it was now time for the next important step...read over ALL the assembly instructions. In my case I go the extra step and check out YouTube videos and the internet to see if there are any pointers that others have come across to make things easier or things to avoid.  One of the builder beware tips I read was from John AE5X blog to not use lithium batteries as the voltage is to high and the FA-VA4 will repeatedly reboot. This type of information is invaluable when kit building. It saves trouble shooting time and going down possibly a long road of parts testing.
This kit does have SMD parts that I said are factory installed BUT some of the items that the builder needs to install are very close to some SMD parts. This brings me to another important part of kit building....spend the money to get the right tools for the job. In this case my Weller WES51 has a large variety of soldering tips. I find the fine chisel tip (Weller ETM) worked great for soldering the LCD terminals, the larger tip for the BNC connector (Weller ETD) and finally the intermediate tip for the components beside SMD parts( Weller ETB).
The instructions had me installing the ON/OFF slider switch first and this was a great start for this old rusty kit builder.  I then moved onto the 3 rails in which the LCD would eventually plug into. You will notice from the picture these are raised up on the board. Each pin has a "collar" so the rail will be at the proper hight but the builder has to be cautious and make sure the rail is firmly seated and upright and straight. One rail is 20 pins and once it's in....it's in! In the past I have had to remove these types of components due to my own lack of attention. IT IS NOT FUN and I have a Hakko desoldering tool  which make desoldering a pleasure but even with that tool removing a 20 pin rail is not fun at all. Take the time to set these parts up for first time correct soldering. My method was taping the rail in place, solder the 2 opposite end pins, check for upright correctness and firm seating on the board. If all is good solder the remaining pins. The other components were easy to solder in place when using the proper tips. I have a magnifier head set  and use it to make sure all connections are soldered properly and that all were done. You would be surprised how many times when multiple pins are involved how easy it is to miss a pin.  The LCD needed to be soldered to the backlight, it involved a 20 pin connection on one side. The instructions said I only "had" to solder the 2 outside pins. I chose to solder all 20 and then on the opposite side of the LCD there were 2 sets of 3 pin connections that need all pins soldered. To make sure the LCD was firmly against the backlight I used some tape. Once the LCD was ready to go again I took time to inspect the pins that were going to plug into the 20 pin and two 3 pin rails. I did find one of the 3 pin setups ups on the LCD was bent! I corrected this but if I failed to see this could had resulted in broken or bent pins.

There is two AA battery holders that need to be soldered in and all I can say is check and double check this. Mixing this up polarity can bring smoke to the smoke test. Believe me it can happen. One of the Elecraft K2 kits I put together almost ended in disaster when I was not paying attention and soldered up a power cable with Anderson pole connectors. I soldered red wire to Anderson black connector and black wire to Anderson red connector. It gets better.....I then plunged it into the K2 and powered the K2 on!! The Astron power supply made a noise and both the inline fuses on the main Astron power supply blew. I was very luck and now double check everything.
It was now time for the "smoke test" and I was so proud of my first kit in over 4 years I had my dear wife Julie come over for the ceremony.......I flipped the switch and........yup you guessed it...NOTHING!!!!! Yup nothing.....but no smoke and that is a good sign. Julie giggled and moved on to other tasks. I made a mental note to always solo a smoke test and avoid the embarrassment. The problem was one of the AA batteries was not firmly in place. Once looked after the power on test was a success. I called Julie over for her to check out the kit but it just did not have the same excitement. That was it for the kit building for the day I still have to preform the calibration. Over all the kit was a  joy to put together and by way of some side notes. The case is a brushed aluminum with attention to detail such as counter sunk screws for securing case, the LCD and buttons lined up perfectly and a nice touch was not having stick on rubber feet (that always over time seem to come off and get lost) This kit came with pull through rubber feet. I still have to calibrate the unit and actually use it but that will be another day.

Completed kit

Smoke test 

Bent LCD pins 

Supporting the 20 pin connector.

Completed LCD pins 

PART2: Mod for Signalink USB so it can be used with 2 radios

The finished product

Below are some of the options I came up with to see if I could get my Signalink USB to work with two different radios……

1. Rewire the internals of the unit each time I switch radios, this was just not an option as it is time consuming and the unit I believe over time would not stand up to these continual wiring change outs.
2. To purchase Signalinks plug and play boards, you simply plug in the board for the K3 or the KX3. This is for sure an option but again I was wanting to not take the Signalink apart each time I wanted to change out the radios.
3. There is also the option of purchasing a second Singalink USB unit but this is very pricey for what I wanted to do.
4. Try to figure out if it is possible to set up the internals so with the simple flip of a switch mounted on the outside of the unit I could change the internal wiring to make either the K3 or KX3 work. This was the option I decided to work on.

   

   internal mod wiring

So settling on option 4 as my choice I set you to see if and how it could be done. I did an internet search because the way I look at it is why try to reinvent the wheel if someone else already has! My results turned up only 2 that I could find were the unit was being used for 2 radios. Both did not seem to suit my need. The first seemed the operator configured a device that allowed the use of two of the same radiosbut at different locations. Each radio could be controlled by the same Singnalink unit. The other site I found this op used 3 RJ45jacks in a separate box to do just what I wanted to do…BUT…..I was looking to not have yet another “box” I was ultimately looking for an “all in one” solution. I ended up drawing out many possible circuit diagrams and at one point almost finished wiring what I thought was the "solution". I then realized it just was not

One final check before assembly

going to work and had to hit the drawing board again.  I finally came up with a workable plan that involved drilling only two holes in the back panel of the Signalink. I had to install a ON-NONE-ON mini switch and a hole for an RJ45 pigtail to be placed. Some of the things I ended up learning as I went along were: 

1. A long pigtail had to be made on the connections between new rear panel switch and the 8 pin DIN wiring. This allow the removal (if needed) of the circuit board.

2. I had to solder the wires into the 8 pin DIN they just did not stay in place and with the extended pigtail there was lots of movement in the wires as the covers were put in place, I didn't want any wires coming loose once assembled.
3. I ended up removing the pigtail and adding a rubber grommet as the plastic housing seem to have a sharp edge to it.
 Below is my diagram for the mod, the "K3 Signalink RJ45" is the internal jack on the unit. The wiring shown in my diagram for this RJ45 is the wiring that is on the circuit board and does not need to be added. Also on the 8 pin DIN there are jumpers between Spk-1, GND-5 and GND-6.  I have tried the unit both with my K3 and KX3 and it works great. The final thing I have to do is just label the rear switch.

PART1: Mod for Signalink USB so it can be used with 2 radios

Rear view before the mod's

Soldered jumpers

In an order to simplify my digi setup with the Elecraft KX3 I wanted to take advantage of my Singnalink USB unit. I currently use it along side of my Elecraft k3 for digi mode operations and I have thus become accustom to how it works. So it only made sense to also use it with the KX3 setup. One major issue I had to see if I could overcome was modifying the Singalink USB device to work with 2 radios? The issue was that the Signalink USB has to be internally wired (by the user)to work with a specific rig and I wanted it to work with 2 rigs! Before even going forward with this adventure I had to open up the Signalink unit and do some long overdue maintenance. The Signalink was purchased used and for some reason the previous owner soldered the jumper wires that configure the unit to work with a specific rig. These jumpers are designed to be plug and play, this way you can reconfigure the unit to other radios if you change your rig over time. The 16 pin IC DIP socket was melted and of no use for what I had planned for it. I set the socket up for my Elecraft k3 and these wires I had to solder in as the socket would not allow the “plug and play” feature due to the previous owner. These wires had to be cut out and then the fun job of removing the 16 pin socket! I have built many kits in the past including 2 Elecraft k2’s. As all kit builders can attest to no matter how careful you are mistakes happen. When the mistake happens of soldering a part in the wrong place……the removal of said part can either go well or very bad! I have had it go both ways and as a kit builder one investment that has saved me many a time is the Hakko 808 de-soldering pump. I used it to remove this 16 pin socket and when finished it looked like nothing had ever been installed on the board. I have tried spring loaded de-soldering pumps and the solder wicks but the Hakko solder pump make all jobs painless. Now with the new 16 pin socket soldered in it’s time to look into making the Signalink work with 2 radio…………coming up in my next post “ how I made this happen and it’s working very well”

After the Hakko 808 is done

Elecraft surgery part 3 of 3

Back to life again

It's time to solder in the new P30 and P35 headers into the K3 then put the rig together hold my breath and plug it in! Now that the old headers are out and the solder pads are cleaned off I now want to fit each header into it's spot and see how they fit. Then I will solder them in and it's very important these headers sit flat on the board. Here is the process I use to solder the headers in, I first only solder the 2 outer most pins. This allows me to reheat the pads if the header is not flat on the board if you solder 4 or more pads at once it's very hard to reheat them if you have to reposition the header. Once I am happy the header is sitting properly on the board I then solder the rest of the pins to the board. I

Soldering end pins 

don't solder them one after the other but instead I solder every other pin and then go back and solder the other pins. I do this because the plastic that supports the pins do get hot. I found if you solder one pin after the next the plastic supports have melted on me. Once the top side has been soldered I then turn the board over and solder the bottom solder pads in the same manner. Now that the pins are in I take a break and then come back and take a very close look at the pins. I am looking for proper soldering job,

Imports of checking both sides of board

also there has been no flow of solder from one pad to the next. Finally that I did solder all the pins, I have had this happen in the past were I have missed a pin. This is why I take the break as I have found if I don't I end up seeing what I want and I miss the unsoldered pin because I want to get to the rig put back together and try it. Satisfied with the solder job its time to clean the solder pads and I use a tooth flossing brush with 99% alcohol. This cleans off any residue and the alcohol evaporates. With the new headers installed it's time to put the rig back together and do the smoke test. At this point it's very important to take your time as you put the rig back together. There is the excitement in getting the rig back together and see how it work! This is the time you forget parts, not tighten parts, rush and misalign parts. Great care has to be taken when mating up the new headers. I had all go together well and as you can see from the picture at the top of the post the smoke test went well.

Flossing tool used to clean board

New header lines up with front board. 

Part 2 of the K3 surgery.

It's time for the surgery

Beware of other components 

It was time to heat up the soldering iron, hold my breath and begin the surgery! First off you have to get to the P30 and P35 headers. Taking the radio apart is a very important step that close attention is required. Don't take short cuts, for example screws that are removed put them somewhere safe. When handling the rig use an anti static mat and wrist band. Finally when handling covers and boards be aware of fragile components, the last thing you want to do is damage components. Once the rig is apart I identify the components to be changed and made sure they really were P30 and P35. I then look at the parts Elecraft sent to me, last thing you want to do attempt to install an incorrect components. I now looked at the PC board and become familiar other components, wires or anything that I could damage when soldering. I have found in the past when concentrating on a very small section of a PC board you could at the same time place your very hot soldering iron close to sensitive comports and your not even be aware you are doing it. With my project today I had to move a wire that was close to P35 and I have to be aware of 2 components that

Front control head removed

Fume trap and soldering iron ready

are close to the pins on header P30. The first step is to cut the header pins right  the 90 degree bend and I am left with pins protruding from the board. With this completed I am left with pieces of pin sticking though the board that have to be removed. It's now time to setup my soldering station, fume extractor and solder feed station. What I do is hold the pin with my needle noise pliers and heat the solder pad and at the same time pull the pin out of the board. All but two pins came out which considering how many pins had to come out I was pleased with the results. I am left with solder pads to clean out (both top and bottom of board) and work on getting the 2 stuck pins out. The best tool to clean the solder pads is my Hakko 808 desoldering tool, it does a clean and fast job! With all the pads clean it's time to deal with the 2 remaining pins. I decided to trim the pins down close to the board and use the Hakko 808 to suck the pin out once it melted the solder. It worked great and I am now ready to install the new headers.

Trimming the header pins

The two stubborn pins

After using Hakko 808

Old out and new ready

The installation of the two headers is going to be part 3 of the post I have added some extra pic's or the removal of  P30 and P35

. 

Doing surgery on the Elecraft K3 part 1

It's time for some surgery.

I contacted Elecraft to see what upgrades were available for my K3 and since my rig is not the 100 watt model it eliminated some upgrades. I have already done some modification upgrades to my rig already. There sure is something to be said for opening up your rig and waving a hot soldering iron over it for the first time. I will admit I never get used to the modifications that involve soldering. The next upgrade for my rig was replacing P30 and P35 which are headers. The new headers are gold plated and transfer data from the radio's brain to the rest of the rig. The new gold headers are more reliable and all new K3's are being shipped with these. P30 is a small 5 pin header but P35 is a 30 pin header! Before undertaking this task you need to have the "right" tools for the job. I am a firm believer that the right tools can be the difference between success and and the "oh my god" results. In this first post I'm going over the equipment I will be using.
First off an anti static mat with a wrist strap, when dealing with state of the art radios this is a must! A medium quality soldering station makes your soldering jobs a pleasure. I have the WellerWES51, this is a nice temperature controled unit. The tips can be changed out for varied soldering jobs and what's nice with this grade of soldering stations the tips heat up very fast and stay hot.

A soldering station would not be complete without some solder. I have in the past built the Elecraft KX1, 2 Elecraft K2's and at least 25 or more other projects having to do with ham radio. The solder I use is what's called SN63PB37. So what does this mean..........it's make up is 63% tin and 37% lead. This solder flows well and does not take real high temps to get it flowing. For the job at hand with my K3 I am using a diameter of .020. Also a good idea is to get a nice solder stand. The one I have was reasonably priced and allows me too gently pull and I have enough solder. I am not fighting with tangled solder or solder that keeps

rolling off the desk. When you solder there is smoke and it's a good idea to pickup a fume fan of some type. I purchased the Fume trap brand of fans. It works great and keeps the fumes away from you breathing them in.  You then have the hand tools that again have to be chosen and purchased wisely. You don't have to break the bank but don't go for super cheap. For this job I will be using my screw drivers, tweezers and diagonal cutters. Finally with this project I have to remove old solder from the pads that are on the K3's PC board. This is a part of the project if things go bad they can go really bad! In the past I have used the hand held spring loaded desoldering pump. They are ok but not great, I took the plunge and purchased the Hakko 808 desoldering tool. This has been one my best investments! This are most of the tools that I am going to be using and for this post that's about all I'm going to talk about. My next post (part 2) I am going to get into the steps I used to change P30 and P35 headers.

The Elecraft k3 stopped working

The K3 just stopped!

This weekend I hooked up the Elecraft k3 as it was all disconnected when we had the house painted as it had to be moved for safe keeping. I wanted to make sure it still worked with all the computer software and the Alexloop. Software can be a very funny thing in that you really don't have to do anything and for some strange reason it just stops working! I am happy to report that all between the PC and Elecraft K3 is working well. There was one heart stopping moment, it was during a tuning session of  the Alexloop and the rig. I tuned the Alexloop for max receive I then hit the tune button on the K3 with the power on 3 watts the SWR was around 3.1 to 1 so some fine tuning was needed. As I tuned the Alexloop the SWR did a sharp rise and the rig powered off!! I waited for a moment and tried to power the K3 on again and NOTHING! I then checked the incoming power and it was dead. Well I thought better the Astron 20 amp supply taking a hit than the K3. Looking at the Astron supply the lights were on and 13.8 volts was showing on the meter. As I narrowed things down it was a fuse on the power bar that the Astron feeds power to. The K3 was fused at 1 amp at the power bar and not 5 amps and the fuse on the power bar went. After the proper fuse was installed all was well again.

Blown fuse

Last week I was able to purchase for a GREAT price a used very large roll top desk and this is going to be the desk that I use for the radio setup when we move to the condo. Not sure what I am going to do with my 3 monitor setup as it's great having all three. There seems at this point to be room for one monitor and all the radio gear. Whats great about the roll top once  your done all the radio equipment hides away into a nice oak desk. At this point I am brain storming on how to incorporate the other two monitors???
As for radio time Saturday was spent getting the K3 setup and my heart restarted when it powered down. There was a contest going on so the band were very busy but it did give me a change to see how Skimmer works under a contest situation. I can see how this piece of software will give my limited size station some advantages. The picture below is what sold me on the desk, the keyboard tray and the two pull outs.

Toroid winding can be fun.....well almost.

The dreaded toroid...

When I first started kit building some years ago it was the dreaded toroid winding that I never looked forward too. After winding and rewinding over time it has not become a dark task, it has taken some time to get the hang of it but I can say that I  no longer get uptight about the process. I have learned some tricks and some never ever skip steps when it comes to toroids. 

I am in the process of building my second K2 rig from Elecraft and there are lots of toroids to be wound. Now having said that if you want you can order per-wound toroids from the toroid guy. If you do order toroids that are per-wound I would encourage you to try to wind your own as well. What I have found is it's only practice that is needed to get the hang of the winding thing. In the past I have built many Elecraft kits were toroids have been involved, I have learned as I said some tricks, some must do stuff and things to stay away from when it comes to this art. 

The Rigol DS 1052E oscilloscope 50 mhz to 100 mhz

Rigol DS 1052E now DS 1102E scope

For some time now I have been in the market for an oscilloscope. Like most hams I don't want to break the bank but at the same time want good value for every buck that is spent. My travels lead me to the Rigol DS 1052E 50mhz  dual channel scope. The scope comes in at the low end  price but has had some very glowing reviews. Also one major plus was the ability to "hack" this scope up to a 100 mhz unit! This a a software hack so no need to get into the SMD nightmare. This may not be what is called a 100% ham blog posting but I do know that lots of hams and non hams are looking for a great scope as well info on how to hack this one to a 100 mhz unit. I am going to run down the process (and mistakes) I went through to finally jack the DS 1052E up to the DS 1102E 100 mhz scope.

A trip into the attic.

Alpha Delta DX-EE with balun.

Hy-gain noise antenna

Being in an antenna restricted community.....now when I say restricted it is in the most extreme way. We have what I call the "condo cops" they do a walk around at least once a month to make sure all is well. If I ever even had a temporary antenna up I would be under their watchful eye!! In a way it's kinda comical it's like these folks on the board have nothing else better to do with their time.....maybe they should get a hobby. Anyway it was time for me to head up to the attic to check on the antenna farm. It has been cool these last few days which makes the attic a bit more bare-able. I have done some reading and it seems the attics in the States have A.C. units, furnaces and even plumbing. Up this way it's great for antennas as there is nothing other than electrical wiring (which can have it's own challenges). I always like to see how the Alpha Delta DX-EE is looking making sure the supports are secure and in good shape. I was good to see the center support rope is in good shape along with the support ropes at each end of the dipole as well.  I did notice one of the 40m traps was sagging a bit......BUT......as they say "if it's not broke don't fix it" Goodness knows if I tightened up that leg (just for my piece of mind only) Murphy could have a hay day with me!!

H-900 active antenna

The antenna looked fantastic other than the sagging I mentioned.....but they say that comes with age!! Anyway I did want to make a minor change for the antenna. I wanted to add a 1:1 balun at the antenna to improve the coax isolation. I have used Balun Designs baluns for all my attic antennas and they are very good quality and super support. Before making any changes I used my trusty MFJ-259B antenna analyzer to check all the bands SWR. I wanted to see if adding the balun changed the SWR at all. I did find that the SWR did go up on some bands and down on other after the balun was in place. It was a very insignificant change in either direction. The other antennas that I have in the attic is an old Hy-gain 18TD portable dipole  that winds in and out like a fishing line and can be set to individual bands. It's similar to  a measuring tape so you can set it for the wave length of the band you want to use. I use this antenna as a "noise" antenna, the MFJ-1026 needs to have a separate noise antenna for the unit to work. The unit does come with it's own telescoping antenna but I did not want to have that antenna extending in my shack. I also have another antenna with is the LF engineering H-900 active antenna. I use this in conjunction with my Elecraft K3, it is the antenna for the sub-receiver. As a side note I just was looking up the Hy-gain 18TD antenna to provide a link......came across someone who sold this antenna on Ebay for almost 500.00!!! Are they going for this much???? If so I can part with it and raise a another noise antenna!

Sagging 40m trap

Kit build came to an abrupt stop

Last weekend I was working on my Elecraft K2 project all was going well until I tried to clean my Weller soldering tip in the wire sponge. For some reason it the wire sponge was not letting the soldering tip go. It was as if the tip was soldered to the sponge that was supposed to clean it! I did free the tip from the sponge and I tried to clean the tip once again and the same thing happened but it was even harder to remove from the wire sponge. I then took a closer look at the Weller soldering tip and half the tip was missing, it seemed to have come off. I never had this happen in the past with these tips and of coarse it was this tip that I did not have a spare of. I did pick up some new tips (4 of them) and will now be able to continue with my Elecraft

Wire sponge

K2 project once again. At one point I was using just a sponge that was damp to clean the tip's but I found this cooled the tips down and the soldering was affected. Has anyone out there ever had the problem of the soldering tips dissolving or breaking off in the wire sponge? The temperature on the Weller WES51 is set to around 800.

Time to do some kit building

Oliver is keeping an eye on things

I was on the radio this afternoon and not much was on the WARC bands   (CW contesting on the other bands) it was time to spin my chair 180 degrees to the project desk. I am in the process of building another Elecraft K2 that when done will be put up for sale. This was supposed to be a winter project but the bands were busy and I was on the radio and not the soldering iron. Now the K2 build has become a spring project. A few years ago if I was asked about kit building I would not ever considered it....BUT...I have been bitten by the bug!! Along with my QRP and QRPp operating I also find kit building to be a very relaxing way to spend time. There are some kits which I have sold such as my Elecraft KX1 and

Control board completed

Some tricky lead forming

LP-Pan. Funny thing is after building something you attach a personal ownership to it that over the counter commercial equipment does not have. I have sold many items purchased but not built and thought nothing of it (other than it was money to get another kit with...maybe time for kit builders anonymous). As for the kits when it came time to say goodbye to make some coin it took some thought before they were put up for sale.
As was said I am in the process of building another Elecraft K2 and I have another blog that deals with the build. I wanted to blog the progress but also highlight other areas such as toroid winding, what was needed to be a kit builder and so on. There are specific posts about the K2 build it self making mention of tricky sections of the build and how it was handled. It's now time to see if the bands have come alive!!

K1EL Winkeyer USB complete

K1EL Winkeyer ready for action

For some time now I have wanted a stand alone keyer as well as one that integrated with my PC allowing me to change and update messages.  The Winkeyer USB is the perfect match as I am able to add 3 AAA batteries and take the keyer with me on outings or keep it at the desk hooked up to the PC via a provided USB cable. The unit comes as a kit with all SMD components already on the board so there is no worry about having to deal with super small parts and the soldering headache that goes along with it. The kit was shipped out and delivered very fast and very safely boxed for the ridge to my QTH. 

The first day of assembly

 The only thing that has to be downloaded is the instructions. I find this to be a fantastic way of doing things. If there are updates to the build then it's a simple update on the website and you are downloading the current assembly instructions. Take the time to print off the instructions that way you can check components off as you do the inventory.  Do yourself a favor and print the instructions in color as there are some great pictures to assist you. The kit went together very smoothly and KE1EL put thought into the order of  assembly. Follow the order and the kit

Battery holder